


I Only Have Eyes For You

by TheExclamation



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blindfolds, Dirty Talk, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:43:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2732993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheExclamation/pseuds/TheExclamation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Routine mission... but it starts to go wrong.<br/>Coulson gets it back on track... but in the process, Something Significant happens.<br/>Clint & Phil refocus on the mission... but then it goes REALLY wrong.<br/>Our Heroes demonstrate why you don't mess with them... but there is still a serious problem.</p><p>And that Something Significant to deal with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Only Have Eyes For You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Telaryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/gifts).



  


**PART ONE: EYE ON THE PRIZE**

"Barton? Can you see the target?"

"Affirmative. Eyes on the target."

"Kerr?"

"Target is scoping the crowd, looking for something."

"Trawling, probably," said Nowicki, mostly to herself but loudly enough for the other two SHIELD agents in the room to hear her.

Phil Coulson leaned over Nowicki's radio set and addressed Clint Barton. "Barton, can you confirm that? Is she hot to trot?"

Nowicki turned to Kerr, who was returning the look. With wide eyes they mouthed the phrase 'hot to trot' at each other. Coulson pretended not to notice, because he was pretty sure they were hoping he'd comment.

"It certainly looks that way, yeah."

"She's not curious about something, or seeking in a non-specific way?"

Kerr updated the room from his terminal. "Target has just spotted our boy."

"No... " said Barton. "There's nothing uncertain about her gaze at all, but I would say she hasn't defined what she's looking for. She's... predatory."

It was an interesting choice of words, considering the nature of the mission. Their target was Lilit LaRousse, aka the Scarlet Woman. A legend in European high society, nobility from two different pre-Renaissance nation-states ran through her bloodlines. She was stunningly beautiful - literally, famously making two Princes, one European and the other Saudi, completely forget their debate about Formula One racing in order to simply watch her enter the room. She was known for being icy and brusque in public, but inventive and insatiable in the boudoir. She was the sort of person the snobbier élite don't want to have at their parties, but feel forced to invite, because her absence would be noticed, and wondered at, making it seem as though the hosts had been the ones rejected as unworthy. She'd been born into wealth, and behaved exactly like the sort of person who'd never worked a day in her life, would never have to, and could never understand what that might even be like.

She was also a legend in the international underground. One of her hobbies, and a very lucrative one, was acting as go-between for several upper-echelon assassins. The Scarlet Woman was a fixer - although she preferred to refer to herself as a talent agent. Everybody knew this, but no government in the world would act against her, because she'd arranged business for just about all of them, including the Unites States of America.

But SHIELD was not a country. And Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD, unlike most world leaders, had not obtained his position by compromising with others - in fact, he'd gotten the job by doing the exact opposite.

So when three SHIELD agents - Erik Hoyt, Luisa Guererra, and Jakob Blum - were murdered in as many months by a new player in the international assassination game, and Fury learned that Lilit LaRousse was this assassin's broker, he decided that SHIELD was going to get to this assassin through LaRousse, and anyone objecting to that decision had better have an argument which was more compelling than three dead agents.

Everybody who knew Fury knew there was no such argument. Most people who'd merely heard of Fury knew there would be no such argument.

So Phil Coulson got the call: Get a team together; we're going after the Scarlet Woman.

And the first name that had come into Coulson's mind was Clint Barton. If his team was going after the front for a number of international assassins, Coulson wanted someone who would be able to match them shot-for-shot. Someone else would have first thought of Natasha Romanoff, and there was no question she was an outstanding agent who knew more than a little about assassination, but Barton had something she lacked: empathy. And Coulson had a feeling that empathy was going to be one of the things which decided the success or failure of this mission.

So here they were, in Lyon. Coulson, directing the Forward Operations - ForOps - room from the top floor of a five-story rooming house, built in the 1700s and now scheduled for demolition, and Barton, the point man, attending a charity ball in a quaint hundred-room urban château two blocks away. The other two agents in the temporary ops room were Sandra Nowicki on radio and Graeme Kerr running cameras & scanners, both of them excellent agents whom Coulson had worked with before.

It was a first-class team, and they had a solid plan. So why was Coulson unable to shake his feeling that something was going to go wrong?

"Heads up," Kerr said softly. "Target is heading Barton's way."

"Yeah, well," said Nowicki, putting a lot of implication into it. Ordinarily Coulson didn't like having agents on a mission who talked when they didn't have to, but for Nowicki he made an exception because he knew her chatter was the release valve for pent-up energy: She was always on the alert, and hyper-aware of what was going on.

"Barton, confirm."

"Roger that, Boss," said Barton, with maybe a bit of something in his throat. "LaRousse is slinking over to me in a direct line. Now I know what a cornered mouse feels like."

"She's only a fixer, Barton. Are you saying she looks combat-capable?"

"No. She doesn't walk like it at all. But there are other ways to be dangerous, and from the swing of her sashay she obviously knows a few of those."

Jealousy. It just popped into Coulson's mind. He swatted it aside.

He knew what the cause was, of course. Clint Barton had just expressed admiration for the sexuality of another person. And Phil Coulson had devoted a fair bit of time in the last year or so to thinking about the sexuality of Clint Barton, perhaps a little too much time. Woven into these thoughts of horniness for Barton, of course, had been the fantasy that maybe Barton thought Coulson was sexy, too, and that someday he might say so. But Coulson had been wishing along those lines for a long time, it hadn't happened yet, and he was pretty sure it was never going to. So when Barton had said Lilit LaRousse was attractive -

But he hadn't said that. He'd said LaRousse knew how to use her body.

Coulson took the warning: He hadn't properly assimilated what his agent in the field was telling him. He'd have to do better than that - much better.

And while he was at it, not allowing his hormones to turn him into an oversensitive green-eyed adolescent would be a good thing, too.

To get himself back on track, Coulson shifted the mission into a higher gear. "Kerr, I want your middle monitor on LaRousse at all times. Keep cycling through every camera in the building with the other two, but the target stays front and centre in your vision. You know the building's cameras by now, so if she moves, follow her. I trust your discretion as to what the best angle is."

"What if I risk losing sight of Barton?"

"You won't." Because Barton's job was to stay close to LaRousse, to use his animal magnetism against her famous appetites to keep her interested in him -

And there was that jealousy again. He was beginning to wish he'd selected Romanoff for this job after all, but there'd been nothing in LaRousse's file about an interest in women.

"Nowicki, when she starts to talk I want you to home in on her frequencies and maintain a second channel with her voice isolated. Muted, but recording."

"You got it, Boss."

On Kerr's monitor, LaRousse and Barton were less than ten feet apart, eyes locked on each other, and despite the thick, noisy crowd, she was closing fast. "Contact in an estimated thirty seconds."

"This is it, Barton. Now remember she has a reputation for - "

Barton cut him off. "Pillow talk. Yeah, I know."

In spite of his agent's uncharacteristic terseness, Coulson finished what he was going to say. "So the best way we're going to get her to reveal any information is by - "

"I remember the briefing, Coulson. It wasn't that long ago."

Nowicki's head shot back from the radio as if the agent had just told his director-in-the-field to fuck off. Which, taking into account the two men in question, was a perfectly fair description of what had just happened. From out of the corner of his eye Coulson was aware that Nowicki was looking over at her d-i-f's face, searching for his reaction. He didn't give her one; he didn't even look at her when he said, ever so quietly, "She'll talk to him first. If you're not recording yet, start." And he stood up, moving his body away from the radio and out of her sight.

Barton had cut him off, and Coulson had ignored the warning. Coulson was off his game, but worse, Barton's reaction indicated he was off his as well.

Neither man was acting like himself. Did Barton also have the gut-feel that something wasn't right? Or was he picking up on whatever signals Coulson was giving off in spite of himself? That happened sometimes to the more empathic agents - and empathy was the reason Barton was on this mission to begin with.

Coulson walked over to Kerr's station, to get a visual on his agent, and try to read the man's mind. LaRousse was in Barton's personal space now, and as she entered it his straight, confident-looking posture somehow seemed to get even straighter and more virile. "Attaboy," said Coulson, relieved that in spite of whatever was going on Barton seemed to be in top form.

In fact, the Hawk was so primed that he spoke first, shattering his target - and his team's - expectations, and knocking the Scarlet Woman's poise slightly off-balance. "Good evening, Mademoiselle LaRousse. You are exactly as I pictured you."

She recovered with stunning grace, but both agents watching Kerr's monitor spotted her doing it. "I am afraid you have me at a loss," she said, and her tone made Coulson think of warm, thin honey being poured over his chest, pinning a man in place and making it abundantly clear that Mlle. LaRousse was never at a loss, but always in control, and always taking delight in it. He felt all of that with crystal clarity, and he wasn't even into women. LaRousse followed her parry with a riposte: "Perhaps you'd be willing to come to my assistance, Mister... ?"

"Whoo," whispered Nowicki, probably unaware she was doing it, "she's good."

Over the radio they heard Barton answer her question. "My name is Alexei Romanoff."

Russian was a good cover for Barton, not only because of his wintry eyes and his light-coloured hair, but because his best friend in the world was an Eastern Bloc transplant whose manner of speaking he could slip into quite naturally when the situation called for it.

LaRousse dipped her chin and raised her glass to him. "Enchanté."

"The pleasure is all mine."

Being directed at a woman with LaRousse's standoffish self-confidence, the line would have felt embarrassingly hokey coming from most men, but Clint Barton wasn't in any way suave - he was a man of physical, dangerous action, as out of place in a socialite party as a black panther at a show dog competition - so from him the line's awkwardness felt direct, visceral: scary but irresistible.

God, Coulson wanted to fuck him.

And so, apparently, did Lilit LaRousse: There was no mistaking the hunger in her eyes, and the desire to meet the challenge he presented and come out, as it were, on top. Her smile showed just the barest hint of tooth, literally and figuratively. "I do not believe I have seen you at any of Luc's parties before."

"You haven't. He and I have only recently become acquainted. But I expect that our relationship is going to blossom, and spread."

"Subtle," said Kerr, not realising he was letting his envy do the talking.

Nowicki was having an equal but opposite reaction. "Where the hell did he learn to talk like that?" Coulson's mind called up an image of Nowicki in a Victorian novel, placing the palm of her hand dramatically upon her corseted bosom. But this might have been the result of Clint's raw sexuality making him a little bit giddy.

Kerr's camera had a perfect framing for LaRousse's facial reaction. She was still trying to pretend they were talking about something else, but she didn't just want 'Alexei Romanoff' any more, she needed him, was compelled to test her own sexual power against his, to see which of them would emerge the victor.

"Then I shall be seeing more of you," she purred, like a cat does when it's encouraging you to pet her belly, right before she grabs you with all four paws and sinks her teeth into your soft, unsuspecting flesh. "I look forward to getting to know you better."

"We have time now. I don't go to bed - well, not to sleep, anyway - until... very late."

"And I think I would enjoy getting to know you from many different angles."

"Jesus," said Kerr. "Why don't these two get a room, already?"

"That is the plan," Coulson reminded him.

"Well, I sure hope they hurry. I'm about to have to run off to the bathroom with a box of Kleenex." He wasn't entirely kidding.

Coulson could tell that because he wasn't very far from the sentiment himself.

He forced his attention back to the video monitor. Barton was opening his mouth to say something, but for some reason LaRousse didn't look as receptive as she had only a couple of seconds before, and she cut him off.

"Will you excuse me, please? I'll only be a moment."

Coulson didn't like the tone of her voice just there; it lacked sincerity. "Kerr, were you watching? What just happened?"

"I'm not sure. One second she was smiling and the next moment she was scowling."

"You were recording."

"Of course."

"Get me a playback; put it on the left monitor."

Kerr did that. On the screen, LaRousse looked very interested, and then her gaze dipped for a moment - and at that moment her expression changed. Why?

"She's heading to the bar," said Kerr.

"Nowicki, pass that on to Barton."

But before she could do that, "We may have a problem here," came Barton's voice over his subvocal mic. "It looked like LaRousse's eyes turned orange for a sec, and she frowned but tried to hide it. That's when she walked away."

"Agent Barton," said Kerr before Coulson could answer, "would you describe the colour you saw in her eyes as a kind of amber?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"She's got x-ray contacts. Was she looking at anything specific when her eyes changed?"

"Yeah, actually, she was looking at my crotch."

"Can't say I blame her," Nowicki muttered.

Coulson couldn't reprimand her for that, because despite the urgency of their situation, his first thought had been the exact same thing. To cover, he said, "Kerr, does LaRousse have her drink yet?"

"Yes, but she's talking to a guy at the bar."

"Just talking? Or flirting?"

"Well, she's... " he zoomed in to confirm, "resting her hand on his knee. Definitely flirting."

Into the radio, Coulson said, "Barton. She's lost interest in you. Go win her back."

"Yes, Sir," said Barton. But if Coulson wasn't mistaken, there was something strange in his tone. Hesitant, not as though he was reluctant to follow the order, but as though he had some other kind of doubt.

Nowicki's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"I can't believe I didn't think of this before now. But it would explain why he was being curt to you back when."

"Nowicki... "

"Sir, if the mission depends on Barton getting it on with this woman, we might be in a lot of trouble."

"Why?"

"Are you serious?"

"Let's assume," Coulson said, his tone containing all the gentleness of a hammer to the shin, "that when I'm asking a subordinate why she suddenly said 'Oh, shit' in the middle of a mission, I'm always serious."

That brought Nowicki in line, even frightened her a little. On Coulson's other side, Kerr was staring very intently at his consoles.

"Sorry, Boss," said Nowicki. "The problem is that Barton isn't het. At all."

Even though the news was potentially catastrophic for his mission, Agent Phil Coulson's first reaction was one of joy - maybe even hope. But he quickly shoved it aside. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes. I, uh... I asked him out once."

"And he doesn't really make a big secret of it," Kerr said, coming to her assistance.

Dammit! And Coulson hadn't known. Of course he hadn't - he'd been afraid to know, because if Barton were only interested in women, well then, it would mean that poor old Phil Coulson would never have a chance with him, wouldn't it? He'd had his head stuck in the sand, to hold on to his fantasy.

And now the mission was at risk because of his pride and cowardice.

He was trying to decide how to phrase his directive to Barton, what to say that would make a homosexual man go over there and pretend that Lilit LaRousse, who in spite of her undeniable attributes held no sexual attraction whatsoever for a man like Clint Barton, was a woman he nevertheless had to have, a woman he was going to claim for his own, and to hell with what any other man wanted - when Barton did exactly what he needed to do for the mission to continue.

He strode right over to the bar, seemingly impervious to the crowd of people in his way, which parted like butter in the heat of his determination. He placed himself directly between Lilit LaRousse and her new objective, presenting his back to the rival as though the man weren't even there, and he said, looking Lilit LaRousse directly in the face:

"You're lucky I'm a determined man. I get what I want, and I've decided I'm going to have you. And you want that, and you know it. Because when I pick you up and throw you onto the bed, your legs are going to open up and your knees are going to grab me and pull me as deep inside of you as anyone can possibly go. The power of you forcing me inside of you and my hunger to go even deeper is going to shatter the lightbulbs, shake the walls, and threaten to bring the entire building crashing down on top of us."

As the sound of Clint Barton saying those words, with that tone, crashed over him like a tsunami, Phil Coulson developed a sudden and pressing need to adjust the position of his legs. It was a testament to the man's self-discipline that he managed to tamp the urge down. At least he wasn't alone: Nowicki's face was more than a little flushed.

"Hurry up with those Kleenex, Kerr. I'm next."

Coulson forced his attention onto LaRousse. She was doing her best to hide it, and almost nobody else in the world would have noticed it, but she was stunned. And why not? What Barton had just promised her were words for the privacy of the bedroom; civilised men didn't say these things out in the open, where anybody could hear them. But 'Alexei Romanoff' was not a civilised man, he was an animal, and when an animal wants something, he simply takes it.

Coulson stepped back, out of sight of Kerr and Nowicki, and brought his hands down to his crotch, stretching his underwear sideways and tapping his half-erect cock into a more comfortable position. Then he returned to looking over Kerr's shoulder at the monitor, where his agent had just pulled himself out of the mud of defeat and seized the mission in a death-grip.

The man at the bar LaRousse had been eying as a consolation prize quite understandably did not want to give up without some kind of fight. "Hey - the lady was talking to me."

Barton turned away from his target, and as he did he smirked directly at Kerr's primary camera, making it clear he was now back in control of the mission. He brought his body around to face his rival for LaRousse's attention, adopting a position where she could watch him chase off the competition.

"Look into my eyes," he told the other man. "You're not in my league: You know it, and she knows it."

"But - "

"Walk away."

On Kerr's monitors, Coulson saw the other man pick his drink up from the bar, take one last regretful look at Lilit LaRousse, and walk away.

"The law of the jungle," Coulson said. "When two males lock horns, only the stronger one gets the female."

"Deer don't live in the jungle," said Nowicki.

"The principle is universal," Coulson informed her, not without a bit of crabbiness. He pointed at LaRousse's face on Kerr's monitor. "She's seen Barton fight for her, which has satisfied her ego. And he won, which makes him look that much more desirable."

"I'm jealous."

And despite himself, Coulson's first thought was, 'Join the club.' He stepped back out of view and adjusted his cock again.

Clint Barton was a marksman. When he focused on his target, when he got it in his sights, he could force it to obey his will so thoroughly that releasing his projectile became a mere formality. He brought the full force of that gaze upon Lilit LaRousse now.

She was a strong woman, immovable as marble, but Coulson noted her repressing the shudder that coursed upward from her spine.

"We had an understanding, but you walked away from me. You owe me an explanation."

LaRousse looked down at his crotch, and spoke without looking up. "I did not think you were interested."

"You're impatient. That's disappointing. Surely you don't want to throw the evening away on someone who doesn't believe in taking his time?"

Nowicki looked over at Coulson, and in spite of himself he returned her look. Where the hell had Barton learned this level of sophistication, not to mention double entendre?

Over the radio, they heard LaRousse informing him, "Your words say one thing, but your body tells a different story."

"My body is currently occupied with two different needs. The first has been brought about by too much Champagne. You know what that need does to a man."

'Nice,' thought Coulson. 'He's playing on her vanity. Of course she knows that a man who needs to pee is going to have trouble getting an erection, and by patronising her about it he's questioning her level of experience, which she is going to want to prove in order to save face.'

Barton continued, "The second need, of course, will be more obvious once the first need is taken care of. The question is, are you prepared for what that involves?"

Nowicki let out a low whistle.

On the monitor, LaRousse's back stiffened. "I am prepared for anything you might have to give. But so far, I have not seen anything on offer."

"You're a good friend of Luc's. You're staying here overnight; you have a room upstairs."

It wasn't a question. Barton wasn't asking anything any more: He was telling her what he wanted, with the assumption that she was going to give it to him. "Of course," she said, as haughtily as she could manage.

"Then wait for me here. I'll return before you know it."

And Barton turned his back on her, looking for the bathrooms.

"Kerr?" said Coulson.

"At his eleven o'clock, around behind the stairs."

"Nowicki."

She passed the information along to Barton, who subtly adjusted his direction of travel and made a beeline straight for the bathrooms.

It was so convincing that Coulson forgot for a moment that Barton hadn't had anything at all to drink, and was only reminded when Barton entered the massive, five-stall, all-genders bathroom, and instead of heading into a stall he started checking to see if anyone else was in there.

There wasn't; Coulson thanked the powers that be for small mercies.

"Guys," Barton said into his subvocal mic, "we have a real problem here." He was genuinely worried, so much so that Coulson's first reaction wasn't concern about the mission, it was admiration that Barton had managed to fake an aura of composure and confidence as well as he'd done so far. "If I don't come out of this bathroom looking like I'm ready for an evening of no-holds-barred sex, I'm going to lose the target and potentially the mission."

"Okay, Barton," said Coulson into the radio. "First I want to say you've been doing great so far. Now, we've been following your interactions the whole time and we have a firm - " he really would have liked a second chance at that metaphor - "grasp of the situation."

He paused for a millisecond, to allow Nowicki the chortle he knew she wouldn't be able to withhold, and then he continued.

"You're the agent in the field, Clint. How do you wish to proceed?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kerr shaking his head at the ludicrousness of the question. Coulson couldn't blame him.

"I want to go through with it. For Blum, for Guererra, for Hoyt. It's just that - I don't know if I can."

"Because you don't find LaRousse sexually attractive?"

From a far, distant part of his mind, Phil Coulson was telling himself that he didn't need to ask that question, that the evidence of it was irrefutable, that he was only saying it because he wanted Barton to confirm that he wasn't into women - but this part of his mind was helpless against the part of his mind which urgently wanted Barton to confirm out loud that he wasn't into women.

His agent was having trouble doing this. "Well, uh, yeah... I guess you'd have to say that although she is a beautiful woman, she isn't really my type."

"Barton - are you gay?"

"Well... "

"I understand that SHIELD policies prohibit me from asking you that question under most circumstances, but this is a mission, and we're about to lose access to the target - " another profoundly regrettable metaphor, as the aghast looks from both Nowicki and Kerr were confirming - "so this does not count as normal circumstances."

"I understand."

"Are you having difficulty becoming tumescent because you're gay?"

"Tumescent? You mean like getting a hard-on?"

"Yes." Coulson really didn't want to stray from non-clinical terms for the state of Clint's cock; he was already having enough trouble staying focused on the mission. "Is your difficulty obtaining an erection due to homosexual preferences on your part?"

Kerr was back to pretending to concentrate on his monitors, but Nowicki was looking at Coulson like he'd just grown a second head.

"Yeah," said Barton. "I can't get an erection because I'm not into women. I'm sorry, Boss, I maybe should have told you I'm gay during the briefing, but I didn't think I'd have to, you know, perform for her."

Coulson really didn't want him to have to perform for her either. It wasn't because of the moral implications of ordering a subordinate to have sex against his will - Coulson was going to leave the final decision of whether or not to go through with that entirely to Barton's discretion, and Barton knew it - but it was the knowledge that if Clint Barton was going to screw Lilit LaRousse, he would keep his mic active, and the sounds of their coupling would be faithfully broadcast to the mission's operations room.

Coulson would have to listen to their dirty talk, he'd have to hear the sound of their pelvises smacking together, the shouts and moans and groans as the two of them climaxed, as Barton's huge, throbbing cock was pushed and pushed to the point where it could no longer contain itself, until his cum burst out...

Into or onto Lilit LaRousse. Coulson had spent a lot of time in the last year thinking about Barton's cock, imagining how it would rise gently when it got interested, how it would pulse and grow and point when it got hard, how it would contract and expand at the moment of ejaculation. He'd wanted for a long time to be the person responsible for making that happen, but now it seemed as though he was going to have to listen to the sounds and imagine the visuals of it happening for the mission's target.

Coulson was a professional. As an agent, he'd killed people when he had to, spared them when he could, and made those decisions in less time than it takes for an index finger to apply nine pounds of pressure to a trigger. As a director-in-the-field he'd made decisions that put good people in harm's way, and more often than not he'd seen to it that they got out of danger as well. Sometimes things hadn't worked out, sometimes people who didn't deserve it had died, and Coulson had dealt with that, put it behind him, and returned to doing his job as best he could.

But, if Phil Coulson had to listen to Clint Barton having sex with someone else... he wasn't sure he could be okay with it afterward.

And yet he would have to be. This potential problem was entirely of his own creation. He'd become infatuated with Clint Barton, and he hadn't done anything about it. For months. If he'd been in the field, directing an agent, and that agent had identified the target, and hesitated for a moment, Coulson would have read him the riot act.

When you screw up, you accept the consequences. There was a mission to salvage, the lives of three agents to avenge.

"Don't worry about it, Barton. Everybody knows that missions are fluid, and change on the fly; think of this as just another paradigm shift for us to resolve. At this time I have to ask you: Are you still willing to go through with the mission?"

"Of course. That is, if I can."

"You understand what you may have to do in order to - "

"Please don't ask me that question any more. I had lunch with Blum a few times, and every time he was asked if he wanted Swiss cheese in his smoked meat sandwich he hesitated, and you could tell he really wanted to, but he always stayed firm to his beliefs. Guererra was a regular at the range, she was pretty good with an automatic - but you should have seen what she could do with her Colt Peacemaker replica. I didn't know Hoyt, but... you know, I wish I had. So please."

That was pretty much the way Coulson felt about it, too. "All right. I had to ask, but the subject is closed."

"Appreciate that, Sir."

"Now. Your willingness is settled, but we need to address your... ability."

"Yeah." There was a deep sense of regret in that one syllable. Coulson had never heard the Hawk sound so helpless before - he wouldn't have even thought it was possible. "I want to, for the mission, but the more I think about it, how important it is, the less I'm able to get hard."

On his leftmost monitor, Kerr's cameras cycled upon the inside of the bathroom, showing a perfect angle of Barton pacing the tile floor in frustration. Kerr paused the cycling in that monitor. "Sir, do you want me to - "

"Keep cycling." Coulson was having enough trouble separating his mission mind from his randy thoughts about Barton's cock; the last thing he needed was a visual distracting him even more.

There was really only one way to salvage this mission. Coulson had known it since the moment Barton had told LaRousse to wait while he went to the bathroom. He didn't want to do it - okay, he wanted to do it, but under totally different circumstances, which amounted to the same thing - but it had to be done.

He stepped in front of the desks, to turn and address Nowicki and Kerr face-to-face. "You two," he said, so crisply they never doubted he was deadly serious. "From this point until I say otherwise, nothing that happens makes it into your after-action reports. Understood?"

"Yeah, Boss."

"Sure."

Coulson stepped back to behind the radio. "Okay, Barton. I want you to do something for me. Get into a stall."

"Okay. Done."

"Now," Coulson said, carefully making eye contact with both Nowicki and Kerr before getting down to business, "take out your cock."

All alone, hiding in the stall of a ridiculously luxurious bathroom inside an even more wealthy and ostentatious mansion, while a high-society party was in full swing just outside, Clint Barton couldn't believe what Phil Coulson had just told him to do. Sure, he'd wanted Coulson to say things like that to him for as long as he could remember, he'd even held his cock while imagining Phil's voice saying them to him, but in all his fantasies involving Coulson, all the instances he'd told himself it was never going to happen, every time he'd held on to the hope that it wasn't impossible, that maybe, someday, he and Phil might be alone and naked together, Barton had never imagined something like this.

The moment was here. Phil Coulson was telling him to take out his cock at last. And Clint Barton, who'd looked Death straight in the face and told him to bring it on, was terrified.

"Um, just to clarify, Sir, when I told LaRousse that I needed to take a piss, I was lying. I wanted to get away for a few minutes and try to figure out how we were going to salvage the mission."

Coulson's voice, when he replied, offered Barton no more room for dodging or playing dumb. "Agent Barton, I recognise that the nature of this op has become unconventional at best, but the success of your mission, which involves avenging the murders of three of our comrades-in-arms, depends at this time upon your ability to get an erection. I realise that this requires you to overcome your natural drives and inclinations, but Hoyt, Guererra, and Blum are counting on you. Are you up for this or not?"

"Um, not yet, Sir. But I will be."

"Okay, we're all going to forget that I just asked that question."

"Works for me."

"Is your penis now in your hand?"

It wasn't. Clint undid his trouser button, unzipped his fly, and pushed the waistband of his boxers down underneath his balls. Then he gripped his limp cock in his right hand. "Yes."

"Okay. Now stroke it."

There wasn't much to stroke, but he moved his hand underneath the penis, back and forth, as best as he could. Nothing was happening.

"How are we doing?"

In his frustration, Barton was very tempted to say something insubordinate about Coulson's use of 'we,' but instead he said, "Not very well, Sir. You know how it is sometimes."

"Have you tried using just the fingertips?"

'Jesus!' and the thought of Phil using his fingertips to stroke the underside of Clint's cock was the closest he'd come to any kind of arousal all night. But it wasn't enough to get anything started. Dammit.

"Barton?"

This time his frustration got the best of him. "With respect, Sir, I've done this before. I think I know the best way to proceed. It just isn't happening."

"You need to stop thinking about the mission."

"My penis is the mission!" In a million years, he never would have expected to hear himself say that.

"I agree, that is precisely the problem. You need to stop worrying about what you need from your penis, and focus on what your penis needs from you. You can't afford to think; you just need to feel."

"Okay. I'm open to suggestions on how to do that."

"Get comfortable."

Because this was a luxury home and not a public restroom, the toilet had a full lid on it, a sturdy-looking one. Clint sat down on it and adjusted his butt and legs so they wouldn't have to work to support his weight. "Done."

"Close your eyes."

He did.

"I want you to focus on only one feeling. Ignore every sensation in your body except the way your penis feels in your hand."

"Okay."

"Now... keeping your eyes closed, I want you to imagine that standing in front of you is a person you find sexually attractive."

That wasn't too difficult. The sexiest man he knew was talking to him right now.

"A person you would absolutely love to... fuck."

Barton had never heard Coulson use the word in that context before. It made his balls jump a little. "Okay, yes, I'm picturing it."

Coulson, naked, coarse dark hair on his toned chest, a smooth and well-defined abdomen, and more hair on his pelvis, giving way to smoothness again and revealing his cock, half-hard in anticipation. Lying in the middle of a large bed, on top of bedsheets that were perfectly clean, smooth, and white. One arm behind his head so he could look up from his pillow, the other hand reaching out to Clint, crooking his finger, beckoning provocatively.

"Now, imagine that my voice is the voice of that person. Can you do that?"

Barton wanted to say, 'Way ahead of you, Phil,' but instead he settled for, "I can do that."

"Good. There are only three things that exist in the world right now. The image in your mind's eye, your hand on your... cock, and the voice you are imagining in your head. Can you manage all that?"

"It's already starting to work, actually." This was true: Barton's cock was a little bit harder than it had been just a few seconds ago.

"Excellent. Now, I want you to take your index finger, and rub it around the tip of your cock."

He did that, and his cock started pushing against his finger of its own accord! "So far, so good."

"Keep rubbing, and vary the speed a little. From time to time, dip your finger lower and bring it back up again."

That felt really nice. Phil seemed to know a thing or two about how to pleasure a cock!

"Now, is your cock a little bit stiff?"

"You bet," Clint said, 'and all for you,' he wanted to add. The image of naked Phil in his mind was becoming more defined: Phil was watching as Clint touched himself, a playful twinkle in his eye and his lips slightly parted, anticipating when he'd be the one doing the touching.

"Wrap your hand all the way around the head of your cock, and give it a gentle squeeze."

"Mmm, yeah."

"Now move your hand up a couple and millimeters, and down, and up, and down, gently massaging your head."

"That feels really good."

"Without taking your hand completely off your cock, switch to using your fingertips. Position them so your dick is pointing at your palm, and stroke upward with your fingertips, up from the base of your head to the tip, stroke, stroke, stroke."

"Jesus!" It felt so good. Clint closed his eyes tighter, imagining it was Phil's fingers on his cock now, picturing Phil doing to him all the things he was describing, Phil sending shivers down his cock and up his spine.

"You're getting hard now, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"I want you to grab your cock now, take all of it in your hand, and stroke it all along your shaft, up and down."

"Yeah!"

"Feel the hand rubbing up and down your cock, twist it a little as you stroke, hitting all your nerve endings, all your pleasure centres."

"God!" Phil was making him so hard, Phil was driving him crazy, Phil was fucking him just with the sound of his voice.

"Is that good? Is that good, Clint?"

"Oh, god, Phil, it's so good, it's so good."

"Are you hard for me now? Are you rock solid and throbbing, aching to explode?"

"God, Phil, yes!"

"BARTON!"

Suddenly Clint snapped out of it. Nowicki's shout had brought him back down to earth. He wasn't fucking Phil Coulson in a huge white bed; he was sitting on a toilet with his dick in his hands and a mission to complete.

A mission that Nowicki had just brought back, pretty much literally, from the brink. Clint had been really turned on, so close he'd been on the verge of letting himself go. And... had he actually just called out Phil's name in the throes of ecstasy, when he was thinking about coming?

He had. Uh-oh.

Maybe Phil hadn't noticed?

Bullshit. Phil Coulson noticed everything.

Meanwhile, in his makeshift ops room, Phil Coulson was having many urgent thoughts at once. He had to get the mission back on track. He was trying to figure out how to thank Nowicki for saving it just now without admitting that he'd almost let his long-buried lust get the better of him.

Also, he was trying to come to grips with the memory of Clint Barton calling his name with the full ferocity of sexual abandon.

The memory of that sound was causing his cock to very visibly poke outward against his trousers. He didn't look down to confirm it, because there was no mistaking how everything down there felt, plus he didn't want to draw Nowicki or Kerr's attention to it.

Agent Phil Coulson, director-in-the-field, had a hard-on in the middle of a mission, and there wasn't a goddamn thing he could do about it. So he would just have to act as though he didn't.

The problem with that plan was the first question he had to ask his field agent.

"Agent Barton. Are you... erect?"

"You betcha. Mister Happy is standing firmly at attention, Sir."

He sounded nervous, uncharacteristically nervous for the middle of a mission. Was he trying to deflate the sexual tension? Was he trying to pretend nothing had happened between them just now?

Was that actually true? Had nothing happened between them just now, and Coulson was the one pretending?

He didn't have time to think about it. "Do you think you will be able to sustain that erection until LaRousse x-rays your crotch again?"

Coulson was aware of Nowicki and Kerr exchanging looks of incredulity. He couldn't blame them.

"Yes, absolutely. I think it'll be a while before my cock comes down, Sir."

"Then the mission is back on. Zip up and get out there."

"On my way."

The silence that followed in the operations room while he did this was thick enough to cut with a bagel slicer. Kerr made a big show of monitoring LaRousse, who was standing at the bar, facing the bathroom with doubt and anticipation in equal measure, while Nowicki, with nothing to look at and no readings to adjust, just stared ahead at nothing, her body trembling with repression.

Coulson stepped up beside her. "Say it."

Her head whipped around and it all burst out. "I think you should ask him out, Sir. Just saying. None of my business, but you're obviously into each other. God damn. You just got to third base and you haven't even had your first date. So I think you should go for it. Sir."

Kerr started laughing. He tried to contain it, and that just made everything worse.

Coulson could feel his face getting very hot. He'd humiliated himself in front of junior agents. And embarrassed Agent Barton as well.

Kerr brought himself under control, and when he turned to face Coulson his eyes were tearing from the strain of it. He repressed another cough by swallowing painfully, and said, "Agent Coulson, Sir. There isn't a single SHIELD agent I know who wouldn't follow you into Hell, and jump in front of the Devil himself to save you. I apologise for laughing; it was unprofessional. I just... liked the idea of you having someone. I want you to know that nothing about what happened during this mission will ever be found out through my actions. Even under torture, Sir - it sounds ridiculous but I mean it."

Coulson really had no idea how to respond to that. He felt proud, and honoured, and still pretty embarrassed, but somehow that was okay.

Kerr and Nowicki were looking to him, for comment, for reassurance about the mission, for a sign that he wasn't mad at them.

He wasn't about to let these fine people down. "Okay. I'll ask him out. Do you think he'll say yes?"

Kerr chuckled a little, shook his head, and returned to his monitors. Nowicki held Coulson's gaze for a moment before answering. "He'll say yes. What happened between you two just now was real, and it wasn't only about sex."

Coulson was spared having to respond to that when, from his station, Kerr informed them, "Target's eyes just turned orange and scanned Barton's crotch again. She looks a lot happier this time."

Back at her post, Nowicki muttered, "Who wouldn't?" which was all the proof Coulson needed that she was back to fully-focused on the mission.

Over the radio, Coulson heard Barton ask LaRousse, "Do you see anything you like?"

"Yes, I do," she answered. "Your new circumstances are a distinct improvement over the previous situation."

The psychological profile on LaRousse indicated you could never let her win the upper hand, because she only respected strength, and Barton responded accordingly. "You have to have patience. I hope your recent insistence on immediate gratification is not a reflection of your usual conduct in... other areas."

He was laying it on a bit thick, and the words didn't sound perfectly comfortable in his mouth, but LaRousse took another look at Barton's bulge, this time without the x-ray contacts, and gave him a come-hither smile that would have knocked most men dead. "My room is on the second floor. Shall we scrutinise each other's conduct more thoroughly in private?"

"Lead on."

That was a good call, Coulson reflected. That way, if Barton's erection didn't last all the way upstairs, she wouldn't notice because he'd be behind her.

And as soon as she let him into her room, LaRousse would show him her box of powder. She wasn't addicted to anything; she just loved a little bit of nose candy in the bedroom, to enhance every aspect of the experience. She'd refined the mixture herself, tailoring it to her optimal levels of light-headedness and body sensitivity - but what she didn't know was that after she'd gone down to the party tonight, Clint Barton had come upstairs and replaced the contents of her sculpted box with a powder designed in SHIELD's labs, to obtain optimal levels of light-headedness, suggestivity, and willingness to answer compromising questions. The drug would take a half hour to obtain full effectiveness, during which she and 'Alexei Romanoff' would probably start having sex (assuming Barton still could), but after that Barton would be able to question her fully about the assassinations she'd brokered, who her clients were, and how to contact them, after which she would fall into a deep sleep, waking up with no memory of the night before, but the assumption that her evening had been spent exactly the way she wanted, like it always had before.

While he reviewed all of that in his mind, Coulson noticed a funny thing: He no longer dreaded the thought of listening to Barton and LaRousse have sex, if they got that far before the drugs hit her system. The moment he and Clint had shared over the radio had changed all that. As a result of what had happened between them, Coulson no longer had the impulse to feel jealous, because listening to Barton have sex with someone else could no longer torture him the way it would have done before. It wouldn't force him to experience someone else getting what he desperately wanted and didn't think he would ever have, because now, in a very real sense, he'd already experienced sex with Clint Barton.

If you wanted to get crude about it, LaRousse was getting his sloppy seconds.

Wait! - what was that sound?

"Security tripwire, downstairs," said Kerr, changing all but his middle screen to monitor the cameras inside their hideout. He reported what they showed him: "Five goons on the North stairwell, black kits, tac-9s. South stairwell - what the fuck is that?"

Nowicki and Coulson swiveled their heads as one to look at his monitor. The thing which had prompted Kerr's question appeared to be a giant emerald-and-gold snake. Twelve feet long, and thirty inches around at its widest point, it was slithering up the stairs at about twice the speed a trained person could run, clearly on a direct path for the top floor and their ops room.

During Hoyt, Guererra, and Blum's autopsies, traces of an unidentified serpent venom had been found in all three of them.

Coulson went to the radio. "Barton, listen up. We are under attack. Repeat, ForOps has been compromised. Six hostiles converging on our position, five mundanes and one giant snake. I repeat, one giant snake, presumed to be - "

Barton cut in. "Our primary target: the assassin. Hold tight; I'm on - "

The entire building shook, and Coulson felt his eardrums get pushed inward. He winced with the pain and fell to his knees. When he opened his eyes again everything in the ops room was black.

"Is everyone okay?"

"Fine," said Nowicki.

"That was an EMP," Kerr said, although the other two had already figured that out. "The five goons are wearing low-light goggles."

"And how much do you want to bet," said Nowicki softly, "that the snake has perfect night vision?"

Coulson had made his way in the dark to one of the boxes he always brought with him in case of emergencies. "Converge on my voice," he said, tempted to add the word 'quickly,' but he knew the other two understood the urgency of the situation. He handed them each a flare. "When the door opens, light 'em up. You two toss yours toward the door, and open fire. I'll keep the rest of the room lit, and wait for the snake."

They barely had time to voice their acknowledgements before the door on the North side was kicked open, revealing the goons decked out in their attack kits, low-light goggles over their eyes. The three SHIELD agents spread out and lit their flares: The bright light burned into the eyes of their enemies, causing them to shriek and fall back. A few of them fired their weapons, but most of those bullets just went into the ceiling. When Nowicki and Kerr threw their flares toward the door, there were a few more shouts and a couple of the goons scrambled to take off their goggles. Before they got very far, the SHIELD agents opened fire, and unlike their adversaries, these bullets found their targets.

Knowing he could trust the other two to guard his back, Coulson scanned the rest of the room, his flare in his left hand and his gun in his right.

The South door was already open: The assassin was in the room!

"Kerr - look out!" Coulson shouted, running over to him, knowing he was going to be too late. The snake faced Coulson, hissing, as its thick tail whipped around and smashed into Kerr, bending him double and throwing him into the wall like he was a ragdoll. Kerr hit the wall hard, dropped, and didn't move.

Coulson tried to get a bead on the snake's face, but it dipped and jerked its head too fast for him to aim properly, so he shot it three times in the body.

The snake screamed, reared back, and spat venom on his face.

It burned his eyes, he screamed like hell, he heard Nowicki shouting his name.

And then the fangs sank into his left shoulder.

As it lifted its head up, Coulson wrapped both his arms around the snake and pulled it in tighter. The snake grunted in surprise and tried to get away, which made Coulson feel quite satisfied, in spite of the fiery agony in several parts of his body.

"Coulson!" Nowicki shouted again. "Let it go; I can't get a shot!"

It didn't matter if she shot the snake or not, because the three bullets it had already taken had barely slowed it down. But he had an idea, which required Nowicki to get out while she could. Coulson opened his eyes even though his eyelids fought against it; the orbs felt like they were melting. Although his vision was a blurry mess, he could see the five hostiles at the North door were out of commission, so there would be nothing in her way.

"Get out of here!" he shouted back at her. "Protocol Eight - you have thirty seconds."

"What? No, I - "

"Twenty-nine seconds! I mean it."

"Copy that!"

The snake tried jerking itself free of Coulson's death-grip, so Coulson had to close his eyes again, to concentrate. Not that he minded shutting his eyes, because the strain of keeping them open had been agony.

He was pretty sure the venom was burning his eyeballs in their sockets. But it was impossible to be sure, since everything hurt so much.

The snake stopped struggling. The way it was being held, its lower jaw was resting on Coulson's shoulder blade, making it impossible for it to bite him again. But it was able to lift its head and bang its chin repeatedly onto the open wounds its fangs had ripped into his shoulder, and that's what it did, causing Coulson to scream again, and squeeze the snake tighter, hoping to deny it air so it would stop moving.

"Coulson!" Nowicki, just outside the door by the sound of her voice.

"Go!" And finally he heard her footsteps hurriedly pounding down the stairs. She was going to make it.

Coulson didn't think he was going to be so lucky. But he'd be damned if he wasn't going to take the killer of three agents - four, now, with Kerr - along with him.

The snake wrapped its lower body around Coulson's legs and he lost his balance, toppling the two of them sideways to the floor.

If it thought that would make Coulson let go, it simply didn't know the man well enough.

In fact, being on the floor made what Coulson had to do easier. He shifted his body, and they both rolled over to the far wall, where Coulson had set up Protocol Eight.

Coulson had chosen this building to set up his ForOps for three reasons: It was abandoned, it was close to where LaRousse was staying, and it was scheduled for demolition. Number Eight of the SHIELD Emergency Protocols is followed in the scenario of a Forward Operations Room being overrun by a superior force, with no hope of the SHIELD contingent prevailing: Explosives are detonated, completely destroying the room and obliterating any SHIELD equipment that might otherwise have fallen into enemy hands. Coulson always preferred to set up ForOps in buildings scheduled for demolition because the explosives were often already in place, making it easier to blow everything up, and making the cover story simplicity itself: The demolition crew had obviously been careless, and the explosives set-up had detonated prematurely.

Setting off an EMP explosion prior to launching an attack had been a really good idea on their enemy's part, because whether they knew it or not, in most cases an EMP explosion would short out any possibility of activating a Protocol Eight set-up.

But Phil Coulson was old school. When he set up a Protocol Eight, you could activate it with a drawstring, all the way from the top floor of the building, through tiny holes drilled in the floors, a thin piece of highest-density line, straight down to the explosives in the basement, attached to the pin of a grenade nestled among the plastique.

Since an explosion in the basement wouldn't have been enough to sufficiently destroy the SHIELD equipment on the top floor, Coulson had also lined the floorboards on this level with Pyro Paste, a great invention from the SHIELD labs which was odourless and colourless, completely inert and harmless unless a spark hit it, in which case it would burn hotter than napalm, and incinerate anything trapped within its confines.

With his eyes shut tight, his shoulder torn open by a venomous bite, and his arms wrapped around a killer twelve-foot snake, Coulson's hand found the drawstring and gripped it like his life depended on it. Nowicki had four seconds left, and he counted them off, then pulled.

He heard the grenade detonate, even six stories up, and he was already moving, kicking the snake away from him and running toward the window, opening his aching eyes to get a vague idea of where the brighter square was amid all the blackness in front of him, and taking his Zippo out of his pocket - he didn't smoke, but he carried a Zippo everywhere - lighting it as he ran, and jumping through the window, his arms in front of him to smash the glass, dropping the lit Zippo just inside the window, where it landed on the Pyro Paste, and he felt the rush of air as it ignited, at the same moment as he heard the explosion of the plastique in the basement detonating, and he looked over his shoulder just in time to see the giant snake get engulfed in flame hot enough to kill instantaneously - mission accomplished - and then he closed his eyes again, surrendering to fate.

As his leap through the glass topped out, and he started falling the five stories to his certain death, his psyche surrendered to the knowledge that there was nothing more he could do. He'd completed the mission, he'd saved one out of two agents, and he'd successfully carried out the Protocol Eight.

Plus, on a personal level, before dying he'd had a chance to share some intimacy with Clint Barton, a man he realised he loved more than his own life, whose sharing of the moment with him in the bathroom meant Phil Coulson could leave this world with no regrets.

As he continued to fall, the last thoughts that ran through his mind were of Clint, imagining Barton speaking to him, softly saying his name...

 

 *****

 

PART TWO: BLACK EYE

Clint Barton was running faster than he'd ever run in his life.

When he'd heard over his earpiece what was going down in ForOps, before the transmission was suddenly and permanently cut off, he got LaRousse out of the way as quickly as he could. She was just unlocking the door to her room, and he shoved her, hard, into it and through the doorway. As she stumbled to the floor, very inelegantly, he turned on the light and slammed the door shut behind him.

Twice he demanded to know whether she'd known about their mission, whether she'd helped set up the attack. The second time he asked, he mentioned the snake.

She said she had no idea what set-up, what attack, he was talking about.

He told her he believed her. And he stepped closer.

Her last living words had been, "But I'm just the cut-out!" as if that could absolve her for the deaths of Hoyt, Guererra, and Blum, as though it erased the sound of Nowicki's screams from Clint's memory, as though that somehow made it okay that Coulson was cut off from him, fighting for his life...

He'd be okay, Clint told himself as he ran down the servant staircase, three steps at a time. Coulson was a professional, one of the best. He could handle himself.

But Clint would be damned if he'd leave Coulson to handle it without him.

He loved Coulson, he knew that now, and he knew that he'd known it for several months, he'd just kept it in a corner of his mind where he didn't have to look at it.

Until he'd had his eyes shut, his dick in his hands, and Coulson coaxing him almost to climax. It hadn't just been sex - although God! the dirty talk had been fucking awesome - and was he imagining things, or did Coulson have more lust in his voice than was required by operational parameters? The sex was just the catalyst, the thing that had distracted him, made him forget all the things he'd been hiding for so long, made him revel in the moment, in Coulson, in sharing an intimacy with him he'd never imagined possible in his wildest dreams. (And honestly, most of his dreams weren't as wild as jerking off to Phil talking dirty to him in a bathroom.)

So maybe he hadn't shot his load, but something had burst into the light at that moment, and he knew he would never again be able to shove his feelings back where he could ignore them.

He loved Coulson. It felt great to be able to admit that, even if only to himself. He, Clint Barton, loved Phil Coulson.

And no fucking twelve-foot snake was going to take Phil away from him.

He was out of the mansion, in the parking lot, running to his car, popping the trunk with his keychain. He stopped at the car, grabbed his bow and quiver, slung the medical bag over his shoulder, slammed the trunk shut, and started running again, a block and a half to the abandoned rooming house.

He had no idea how long it had been since communications were cut. He only knew it had been too damn long.

He'd have to stop swearing so much. Phil might think it was a turn-off.

Thinking of Phil again, of what he'd wanted to tell him for so long, which he knew he finally had the courage to say, made him run faster.

He rounded the corner, and the rooming house was in sight. As he ran, he tried to keep his head steady, straining to see through the windows on the top floor.

He saw Phil.

Smashing through the window.

And the snake was right behind him - holy crap, it was ugly! No wonder Phil's voice had sounded so tight over the radio.

The top floor of the rooming house blew up.

He'd seen Pyro Paste enough times to know it when it lit up in front of him. For the first few seconds, it always burned very blue, so blue that any animal looking at it reared back instinctively, recognising that it was the most dangerous form of a timeless enemy.

He knew the assassin was dead. He knew it had been a horrible way to die. But if Clint found himself wishing it could have died some other way, that was because he would have liked for the thing to suffer longer.

Wait! Something was wrong. Clint shoved aside his vengeful thoughts and focused back on Phil. His jump had topped out, and gravity was starting to work on him, which Clint hadn't been expecting. Something was definitely wrong: Coulson wasn't in control of his descent -  he was falling!

'Okay,' Clint reassured himself, 'you can't really blame me for thinking Phil had a plan.'

But it was worse than simply falling, because Phil didn't look right. Barton knew his director-in-the-field well enough to tell, even from half a mile away, that Coulson was injured, badly.

He was going to hit the ground in less than five seconds.

"Coulson!"

The grenade in the basement of the rooming house detonated, setting off the plastique explosives. The rooming house started to crumble in on itself. But Barton barely noticed; all his attention was on something else.

"Phil!"

There was only one chance. Literally, one shot. He stopped running, grabbed an arrow, and drew it back in his bow.

He'd never even heard of anyone attempting this shot, much less making it.

But Clint Barton was pretty damned motivated at that precise moment.

He sighted, and let fly.

Phil Coulson was three feet from a fatal impact with the ground when the Hawk's arrow flew into his flapping jacket, dug in hard, and kept right on going, jerking Phil's falling body sideways, canceling his downward trajectory, saving his life.

A millisecond later the arrow thudded into a tree, pinning Coulson's jacket to it. This caused the SHIELD agent to swing around violently, but even though his eyes were still shut he had his arms up instinctively in front of his body, so his forearms took the brunt of the impact. It hurt like hell, but he wasn't going to complain.

The moment he'd felt the tug on his jacket, he knew Clint had come to save him.

And now Clint's arms were around him, yanking the arrow out of the tree and un-pinning him, lowering him slowly to the ground. With his uninjured arm Coulson reached out, wanting to touch Clint, to let him know wordlessly how grateful he was, to show him how much his friendship and reliability meant to him, and to feel him, to reassure himself that Clint was real, that he was going to be safe. His hand landed on Clint's arm, and squeezed.

He had such solid arms, yet they were handling him so gently.

"Phil, are you - Holy shit, what happened to you?"

"Lots," he said, trying to lighten the mood before he got to the bad news. "I got sprayed in the face with venom, and the thing bit me deep on the shoulder."

"Jesus." And then, behind the smoke and the dust rising out of the collapsed building, Barton spotted some movement. "Just a sec."

There were men approaching, cautiously but quickly. They were wearing black, and sticking to the shadows, but Clint could still see them. There were at least four of them, heavily armed.

"Hostiles. Can you walk?"

"Not very fast - and I can't see."

"Jesus," Barton said, unable to think of anything different to say. Ordinarily he'd take the hostiles out, but they hadn't seen him yet, and if he got their attention he'd draw their fire - and in his current state, Coulson was a sitting duck. "Okay, get on my back. We're getting you out of here."

Suddenly Coulson felt Clint grab his wrist, and the power and determination in his grip sent a jolt of electricity through the entire arm. Now was really not the time to be sexually stimulated by Barton's touch, but he couldn't help it. The injuries were weakening his usual rock-solid resistance, his adrenaline was up, and with his eyes shut his body was compensating by becoming hypersensitive.

Barton wasn't used to manipulating people when their vision was impaired; he wasn't thinking that he should be telling Coulson what he was doing, and giving him instructions so they could work together. Every touch was a surprise, and sent a tingle through whatever body part Clint touched.

There was something exciting, Coulson was forced to admit to himself, about being handled by Barton this way, about being helpless, literally in Barton's hands, and trusting him completely, to get them both to safety, to take care of him when he needed it the most.

He'd have to examine those feelings more closely, but at a later time.

Clint, still holding him by the wrist, moved Coulson's arm so it draped over his shoulder, causing his chest to thud into Barton's back. He didn't mind: Now that they'd shared the moment of intimacy in the bathroom, Coulson realised that for him the genie was out of the bottle, and he wanted more of Barton, all he could get. So when he wrapped his arms around Clint's chest, pressed his own chest into Clint's back, and lifted his legs so they could be grabbed in a piggyback carry, he wanted to squeeze harder, to press Clint's body so tightly into his own that their flesh would merge, the two of them becoming one.

"Um, Boss? Are you packing?"

"No, I dropped my weapon upstairs."

"Then what's - "

"Do me a favour and ignore that, okay?" 'For now,' he added to himself.

"I'll do my best," said Barton. 'For now,' he added to himself.

With Coulson holding on, Barton quickly but quietly jogged away from the ruins of the rooming house. Coulson noticed that with each step Barton distributed his weight so the man he was rescuing would bounce around as little as possible. It was yet another way Barton was impressive: considerate, reliable, ultra-capable, his body a perfectly-tooled machine, well-oiled and -

His dick twitched. Into the small of Barton's back.

Barton didn't say anything. But there was no way he hadn't noticed, not for a man that aware of himself physically.

Coulson felt Barton shift his arms, reaching into a pocket. He heard something clatter onto the concrete sidewalk, and then Barton raised his leg high and brought his foot down hard. Coulson heard the sound of a cell phone being crushed by the heel of a leather shoe. It was a sound he'd made himself, far too many times. It had to be done; they didn't know how their operation had been compromised, who was looking for them. Now they couldn't be tracked.

The downside of course was that they couldn't call for help, either.

It was just the two of them, alone together. 'Under different circumstances... ' Well, to be perfectly honest with himself, even under these circumstances he was pretty okay with it.

"Do you think you could try and stop doing that? It's a little distracting."

Coulson's dick had twitched again. He really did not want to do that a third time - he hadn't wanted to do that a second time! - but he had no idea how to prevent it.

Still... Barton found it distracting, did he? In a good way?

"Boss... "

"Sorry."

To try and get himself back under control, Coulson took a deep breath. But the air intake scratched at his dry throat, and made him cough. He held it in as best he could, because the sound would bring their enemies down around them, but the effort of catching the cough in his mouth rasped his throat and made it even worse, so he convulsed harder, managing to keep his mouth shut only through a supreme act of will, especially when the shaking of his body shot an arc of pain out of his shoulder so acutely that he swore he could follow the venom pumping through his bloodstream, down his arm, all along his side and back, into his legs, and through his neck to smash into the top of his head.

By the time he was finished coughing, he wasn't horny any more. He was barely even conscious, only holding on to Barton because his animal instinct knew it had to hold on or die.

So he held on.

Barton walked for fifteen minutes, until he found an abandoned storefront and broke in through the back. The windows were all boarded up, so he was able to turn on his penlight without worrying about the brightness being seen outside. He lowered Coulson carefully to the floor, and shone the light on his face.

He was so pale he looked dead. Barton forced himself not to think like that.

"Coulson, can you hear me?"

Coulson opened his eyes, but it hurt so much he hissed and closed them back up again.

"Shit. Coulson?"

"I'm okay. It just... really hurts."

Tears were coursing out of the corners of his eyes and down across his temples. And he'd only had them open for a few seconds.

Barton opened the medical bag. It contained, among other things, an antidote to the snake's venom which SHIELD had developed using the toxins they'd extracted from the dead agents.

It hadn't been safe to administer it before; the zone had been too hot. He only hoped that by now it wasn't too late.

Barton put his hand on Coulson's chest. Coulson inhaled sharply.

"Sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No, you just surprised me, that's all." In a good way, Coulson realised. Now that the run through the streets of Lyon was over, he was back to being surprised whenever Barton touched him. And even though he himself felt worse than he had fifteen minutes ago, the sensation of Clint touching him felt even better than it had before.

Barton's hand was still on his chest. Coulson breathed in, deeply, as if he were testing his body, but in truth he wanted the excuse to raise his chest, to push it against Clint's hand.

It felt really, really nice. He could feel his heart beating against Clint's hand. He wondered if Barton realised he was the reason it was beating faster.

"Okay, Coulson, I have two syringes with antidote. First, I'm going to give you a needle in the arm."

Well, if there was only going to be one time Barton thought to warn Coulson before touching him, right before jabbing a needle into him was the best time to remember!

Barton got a hand under Coulson's back and lifted. It felt like he was being raised for a kiss, and Coulson smiled in order to cover that he'd been about to pucker up. Then Barton tugged at his sleeve, and again this was a pleasant surprise, Clint undressing him, holding him up and tugging his jacket off, leaving Coulson nothing to do but just experience the sensations of being cradled and undressed.

It was over too soon, and he felt Clint undoing his sleeve button, the fingers tickling his wrist a little bit, and then Barton grabbed both ends of the cuff and pulled them apart, ripping his shirt - Mmm! - right up the arm to his bicep.

"Three, two, one." The countdown brought Coulson back to reality, and the needle bit into his arm. Through it he felt Barton press the plunger down, felt the cold liquid entering his body, pictured Barton's thumb pushing down, the plunger delving deeper into the body of the syringe, imagined Barton penetrating him in other ways -

'Focus, Coulson, this is an injection, for crying out loud!'

And then it was finished. He felt the needle slip out of his arm.

"You okay, Boss?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Your lips were moving, like you were trying to speak."

"No, I'm okay."

"Good. Now I'm taking the needle out of the other syringe, and what I'd like to do is squirt the antidote directly into your eyes. Do you think that'll work?"

"Well, if... " He didn't want to finish that thought. "I think that has a better chance than anything else."

"Okay. It means you're going to have to open your eyes, though, force them open while I hit them with liquid."

"With any luck, the cooling effect will feel good." Coulson took a deep breath. "All right, I'm ready. Do me a favour? Point the flashlight straight up."

"Done."

Coulson opened his eyes - too fast, as it turned out, and he had to quickly shut them again. Barton waited for him to take all the time he needed. On the second try, he managed to do it more slowly, raising the lids a little bit at a time, until they were almost comically wide. Barton started bringing the syringe around, but Coulson gripped his arm and stopped him. They stared at each other for a moment, water welling up in Coulson's eyes again, and when it overflowed and started dribbling down his face, Coulson said:

"Okay, I'm ready. Hit me."

Barton leaned forward, and with one arm supporting Coulson's body and the other holding the syringe, he didn't have a free hand to hold Coulson's eyelids, but he trusted that Coulson would keep his eyes open as long as he needed to, because he was a fighter.

Barton pushed the plunger, and watched the liquid course out of the syringe and onto Coulson's eyeball, and the eyelid twitched but the eye stayed wide open, and once again Barton found himself marveling at the strength of this man, his incredible spirit, his ability to do absolutely anything and everything that had to be done, and then give it a little bit more. Barton lifted his thumb off the plunger only long enough to switch eyes, and then pushed it, not too fast, all the way down. When the syringe was empty, Coulson waited for a few moments, just to make sure they were done, before closing his obviously aching eyes again.

"Are you okay?"

"As well as can be expected," Coulson said. "Is there a tensor bandage in your medical bag? I'd like you to wrap it around my eyes, so I don't have to concentrate on keeping them shut."

"You got it."

He lifted Coulson's head up, and again it felt to Coulson like he was being drawn into a kiss, and this time he sighed in contentment without worrying about it, let Clint interpret that sound however he wanted, Coulson didn't care, Clint was taking care of him, he'd surrendered to him utterly and Clint was going to make everything okay.

Even the bandage, when Clint was tightening it around his head, felt like he was being caressed.

"Is that too tight?"

"No, no, 'sfine."

"Coulson?"

He'd been slurring; that was no good. Barton didn't want him passing out, and he didn't want to cause Barton any extra anxiety. "Don't worry about it," he said in a solid, steady voice.

"Okay."

Then Barton lowered his head back down to the floor, and Coulson was disappointed.

"Hang on." He heard Barton taking off his jacket, and then he felt a hand on the back of his head again, raising him up - only to lower him gently onto Barton's rolled-up jacket.

Tease!

Still, it was nice to have a pillow.

He realised Barton had been talking to him, but his mind had been elsewhere. "Can you repeat that?"

"Aside from your eyes, what else hurts?"

"Well, there's probably two big, ugly puncture marks where it bit me on the left shoulder."

Now that he was no longer distracted by Coulson's face, Clint took a proper look at Coulson's injury. It didn't look good. "Okay... there's blood, sweat, and maybe some other dampness as well. Stick your arm out as far as you can." Coulson managed that with only a little bit of extra pain. And then Barton said, "Sorry, Boss... I think your shirt has to come off."

That seemed weird to Coulson. Why did Barton, who'd shared locker rooms and medical facilities with him any number of times, suddenly have a problem with the idea of taking his shirt off? Was his near miss in the bathroom too much for him? Was he now uncomfortable with Coulson, and nervous about the idea of helping him out of his clothes, even though the result would only be PG?

He had to ask. If there was one thing he'd decided as the building was blowing up behind him, it was that he would never hold back from telling Clint what he was feeling, never again. "Clint... is there some reason you don't want to take my shirt off?"

"Yeah, you've got blood stuck to it. I think that when I pull it loose, the wound is going to open up."

Well. That would have been embarrassing, if Clint could read his mind. At least he'd determined that Clint wasn't shy about helping him out of his shirt.

Barton continued, "I do have a knife, but it wouldn't do as careful a job as medical scissors, so I really think - "

"The shirt has to come off, Clint. Let's get it over with."

"All right. This is gonna hurt."

Coulson gritted his teeth, the pain of the snake's jaws clamping down on his shoulder still fresh in his mind. "It won't be as bad as what caused it."

Clint didn't like the idea of hurting Coulson, and wanted to put that inevitability off as long as possible. "I'm going to start with the bottom button, and work my way up, okay?"

"Okay."

As he reached out for Coulson's shirt, Clint also gritted his teeth, unaware he was doing it. He was trying very hard not to remember his earlier thoughts about Coulson naked, half-erect and wanting him, but of course the more he tried not to think about it the, er, harder it was not to. He wanted to close his eyes, so he wouldn't see himself baring Coulson's torso, but this was a delicate operation and he needed to do it right. He had no choice but to just bite the bullet and get it done.

Alone in darkness with his thoughts, Coulson could feel Barton hesitating. What was taking him so long? It wasn't that he was... 'No, Phil,' his rational mind cut in, waving its arms in frustration at his insecurities. 'Don't be stupid, he sees how bad the injury is, he just wants to take it off with the minimum amount of pain to your - '

And then Barton touched him, on the abdomen, and since Barton typically moved without any sound or warning of any kind, it caught him by surprise and he hissed involuntarily.

Barton's immediate reaction was, 'Oh, shit - I've done something wrong!' But by now he had Coulson's shirt held tightly in his hands and he really didn't want to have to stop.

"Are you okay? I didn't hurt you somehow, did I?"

"No, I'm just... You surprised me, that's all."

"I'm an idiot. You can't see; I should give you more warning when I'm about to do things."

"It's really okay; you said you were about to start at the bottom. Let's do this."

"I'm going to pull your shirt... out of your pants now."

"Yes. Please do."

Barton had fantasised many times about taking Coulson's shirt off, about Coulson wanting him to, saying 'Please' to him, but somehow, despite how many different scenarios he'd imagined, none of them had been like this.

He tugged on the shirt, weakly. It didn't move. Was it too tight? Was he going to have to reach under Coulson's waistband to pull it loose? Or undo the button on his trousers?

He pulled again, and the shirt came out, but as it did the sudden movement across Coulson's pelvis caused him to jerk his hips upward, thrusting his groin into the air -

And Barton found himself getting turned on! That wasn't right; Phil was in pain, and he might never see again. But still... Phil had talked dirty to him tonight, almost made him come, and now he was going to take off Phil's shirt, one button at a time, from his flat stomach to his hairy chest to his cable-like shoulders...

Barton's dick twitched. This was so unfair. He couldn't even get it up with a defibrillator when the mission depended on it, but now, when the last thing he needed was Mister Happy spoiling his concentration -

"Barton? Do you need me to explain how my shirt buttons work?"

"No. Sorry." To cover, and also because it made more sense, he said, "Sit up?" and helped Coulson do it. Then he started undoing the first button, but now he was rushing to get it over with, and it took twice as long, but finally he got it open, and then he moved to the next button, and as his hands slid up the shirt his fingers brushed Coulson's bare skin and Barton's traitorous dick twitched again. He decided to close his eyes after all, and forced himself to continue.

This was ridiculous, Coulson thought. He was suffering a medical emergency, and needed proper treatment, so the anticipation of having his shirt removed, and the slowness with which it was ultimately being done, should not be a turn-on.

But they were. There was no denying it. Barton was taking his shirt off, and despite the burning in his eyes and the hot poker ache in his shoulder, Coulson was getting horny as hell over it.

Then Barton's fingers brushed his stomach, and he wanted to move into it, to feel Barton's hand pressing into his exposed skin, he wanted to moan and let Barton know how good it felt, how long he'd wanted to touch and be touched by him -

Only his training saved him from moving, saved his lips from opening and emitting another instinctive, animal sound.

After what felt like forever, an agonising, delicious forever, Barton finally got to his chest. His hand slipped off the button, and brushed his erect nipple through his shirt.

Coulson was pretty sure he didn't whimper, but he couldn't have sworn to it.

'Oh, shit - I brushed his nipple! Should I apologise?' No, Barton figured, because Coulson didn't seem to notice, and if he thought he might have noticed then Barton would only be confirming it. Plausible deniability.

Did Coulson know how he felt? He was pretty sure that in the bathroom he'd actually shouted, 'Oh, God, Phil, yes!' but maybe he hadn't... No, he definitely had. Had Coulson noticed? Stupid question; he was Phil Coulson. On a mission, even. He'd noticed. But did he know what it meant? Or did he think it was just an accident, just a spur-of-the-moment thing? And how did he feel about any of it? How did he feel about Clint? Was it any different, now, between them?

"Barton? You were doing fine until a moment ago. Two buttons left."

"Sorry." And he went back to unbuttoning, to taking Phil's shirt off, slowly but surely revealing his naked chest...

His dick twitched again. At least it was almost over. The last button came undone, and Clint moved behind Coulson, because it would be easier to take the shirt off that way.

It was just a fortunate coincidence that from behind he wouldn't have to look at Phil's nipples, which were pointing as though calling to him.

Coulson felt Barton move to crouch behind him, and he knew Barton was going to touch him again, but he didn't know where, or how. His skin waited impatiently, eager to once again feel Barton's fingers pressing into him. He imagined the aura of sensation around his body expanding, stretching out to sense where Clint's hands were, and maybe to direct them toward him, to draw Clint's hand toward his eager, waiting body. Maybe Clint could slide his hands down Coulson's sides, and then around his waist, pressing him back, so his ass could feel Clint's hard cock, the cock which not so long ago had gotten erect only for him.

This was ridiculous. He'd been bitten by a venomous, twelve-foot-long snake. Now was not the time for bumping and grinding.

But maybe later...

Coulson felt Clint placing his hands on him, one hand resting on his uninjured shoulder, and the other pressing into that shoulder blade, powerful hands, in control, but so gentle. He would let Barton do anything he wanted with those hands, would allow those hands to move him and touch him and manipulate him however he wanted.

"Is that okay?"

"Yeah... " and he just stopped himself from purring, 'That's nice.'

"I'm going to lift your arm now and take the sleeve off this shirt, okay?"

"Anything you want." He couldn't resist that one.

And then those beautiful, large hands were guiding, him, lifting his arm up, tugging on his sleeve, pulling the fabric and bending his body until one of his arms was completely free.

The night air felt cool on his skin. He felt his nipples tighten just a little bit more. He breathed in deeply - and the stretch in the skin of his mauled shoulder brought waves of agony flooding down across his back, reminding him why Barton was really taking his clothes off.

His shirt. His shirt off. Just the shirt.

 "Coulson, are you all right?" He'd made noise when the pain had started.

"Sorry, that was my fault. I stretched the bite a bit too far."

"Okay, well, let's take a look at it. Ready?"

"Yeah."

Barton moved the shirt across to the other side of his body, but the sideways movement ceased the second the shirt stuck on something. Coulson felt the collar move upward a little as Barton gripped it, then he felt the dried blood on his shoulder protest against his flesh as the collar, then the shoulder of the shirt, was gently lifted away from his injury.

The shirt stuck a little more insistently, and both of them knew Barton had gotten to the wound. Coulson heard the rustle of clothes as Barton leaned closer to him, smelled the familiar musk of his friend and comrade as his eyes homed in on the bite mark, and felt the warm air coming out of Barton's body as he slowly exhaled. Barton's head was right there, just over his shoulder, close enough to kiss on the cheek: All he'd have to do is turn his head.

"Confirmed. If I remove the shirt, I'll rip the scab off."

"It has to be done; we need to get some antidote in there."

"I'll be as gentle as I can."

Under other circumstances, that phrase...

"You're doing great, Clint. This is going to hurt me, though. I'll probably make some noise, but don't worry, because the pain isn't going to be anything you and I haven't gone through lots of times before."

"Okay, Phil. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

And Barton did it, as quickly as he could without causing more pain than necessary. Coulson felt two thin lines of liquid course down his back, so as expected the wounds had opened and he was bleeding again.

"Ew."

"Don't worry, Barton, we knew that was going to happen."

"No, not the blood, there's something mixed in with it, a greenish-yellow liquid."

"That has to be the venom. This is a good sign."

"It is?"

"Sure. If it's not fully mixed in yet, probably because of the preventatives we all took when we started the mission, then you can suck what's there out."

"I can do what?"

"Suck the poison out. It's what you do for rattlesnake bites."

"What I do for rattlesnake bites is I spot the snake when it's too far away to hurt me, and then I avoid it."

"That option's been taken away from us."

Okay. So Coulson wasn't leaving him any choice: Clint was going to have to suck on his shoulder. His strong, solid shoulder, with the sculpted but not bulging deltoid, the cleft where his collarbone was, connecting all the way to his pristine neck, which always smelled faintly like his shaving cream, camphor and eucalyptus...

He could do this. He could suck on Coulson's shoulder. His friend, his comrade, the man he loved, needed him to suck on his shoulder, so he would do it.

Although he was pretty sure he couldn't do it without getting turned on.

Coulson took a deep breath, preparing himself.

Barton was going to suck on his shoulder.

It was probably going to hurt like hell.

But also, it was probably going to turn him on.

He wasn't going to be able to see him doing it, but he was going to feel Barton's mouth on his bare skin, Barton's lips pressing into his flesh, the suction as Barton -

Once again, Barton had forgotten to warn Coulson before touching him. Suddenly there was just this pressure on his shoulder, and Clint was there, his mouth clamped over the bite marks.

He'd been right: It hurt like a sonofabitch.

But fuck! did it also feel incredibly awesome.

"God!" Coulson shouted, and wrapped his good arm around Barton's back, using his hand to hold Barton's head in place, biting back the screamed 'Yes' that had threatened to come out after 'God,' and hoping that Barton was interpreting his exclamation as pain instead of pleasure, and the hand as an insistence on continuing the procedure despite the pain, rather than the clinch of a lover in ecstasy.

Clint was sucking, on him, drawing Coulson's skin up into his mouth, his lips wet and his mouth warm on the aching shoulder. Then just as suddenly the mouth was gone, and he heard Clint spitting, and the mouth was back, sucking and sucking and sucking, and the pain was making the sensual intimacy more intense, and his dick jumped to attention, then Clint was gone again, spitting, and then back, and Coulson grabbed a handful of hair, clenching it tightly, and then realised what he was doing and quickly let it go again.

No! Coulson was letting go of his hair. Clint wanted him back, wanted Phil clutching at him again, wanted to feel how much Coulson needed him -

This was so weird.

He lifted his head away and spat a third time. He was pretty sure he'd gotten the last of the poison out, but he needed to make sure, so he once again put his lips to Coulson's shoulder.

He'd never been this close to Coulson's neck; the familiar smell of his shaving cream was even stronger. He loved that smell, because it smelled like Phil. He sucked on Phil's shoulder, felt his lips pressing harder into Phil's skin, felt the solid muscle beneath, felt his cock pushing against his zipper, but by this point he didn't give a damn.

The snake venom had a very distinct flavour, like burnt orange. He didn't taste any more poison on Coulson's shoulder, only blood. He stuck his tongue out a bit, to make sure, searching the area for the taste of danger, then he probed a bit further, and his tongue hit the edge of one of the bites, and he skimmed around the edge of it, and it reminded him of another kind of opening, an opening of Phil's he'd imagined his tongue many times teasing, caressing, and pushing open with the tip, and before he knew it he'd pressed inside the wound, and the flesh of the hole was squeezing his tongue on all sides.

'Sweet fucking God, yes!' Coulson's head felt like it was about to explode, from the sudden cutting pain, from the sensual waves of Clint sucking on him, from the thrill of being penetrated, of having Clint inside him, Clint's tongue taking him -

"Wait!" Coulson said, way too loudly.

Barton's rational mind suddenly started shouting at him. 'Oh, shit! What the fuck am I doing?' He snapped his head away from Coulson's shoulder.

Coulson didn't look mad, or pained, just perplexed. "What are you doing?"

Barton tried to think fast, but he was still a bit too light-headed for that. "Um... Just making sure I get all the poison out."

"That's not exactly the recommended procedure."

"Hey, I already told you how I deal with snake bites. Are you really in a position to criticise?"

"No, I guess not," said Coulson, feeling very warm on the face. He hoped he wasn't blushing.

"I think I got all the poison out. I'd like to clean off the wound a bit now."

"I think that's a really good idea." The water would cool off his skin.

There was a bottle of saline solution in the medical bag; he heard Clint pop it open, was aware that Clint was soaking a sterile pad with it, and then felt a drop of water smack into his bare chest. Despite how warm he'd been feeling, his nipples tightened right up again.

"I guess you're holding the compress over me?"

"Sorry," Clint said, feeling like an idiot. "I keep forgetting to warn you." His eyes were drawn to Coulson's nipples, the sharp definition of them, thrusting right up, beckoning for him to lean forward and place his mouth on them, warm them up, maybe run his tongue over them as well.

He watched the drop of water leak ever-so-slowly down the side of Phil's body, and the more it traveled the smaller it got. Barton was jealous that it was able to touch Phil that much, envied the way it could give itself to him completely like that, get absorbed into Coulson's flesh, and become one with it.

"Barton?"

"Right." And he pressed the soaked pad gently against Coulson's shoulder.

Even though he'd been expecting it, the thrill of the water still came as a bit of a shock. Coulson arched his back, then remembered his dick was still hard. He didn't want to draw Barton's attention to it, so he quickly lay back down again. Liquid squeezed out of the compress, cool liquid against his warm skin, and he reached out with his nerve endings to better feel it dip into the two holes in his shoulder, trickle against his neck, and course down to his back. He imagined it was Clint, his fingers, or his tongue again, or maybe even the tip of his cock, gently stroking him, exploring his skin, learning what turned Coulson on, and also what parts of his body turned Clint on, his collarbone, his deltoid, his -

"Phil?"

He'd been drifting off. "I'm here."

But they both knew that for a moment he hadn't been. And Phil realised why his skin had been feeling warmer, and Clint noticed that Coulson's body was giving off a bit more heat than before, and what that meant.

Coulson was developing a fever.

"Okay, so... " Barton began.

"Yeah."

"I don't have any way to contact SHIELD."

"I heard."

"You need to get to a hospital."

"One of two things is going to happen," said Coulson. "Either the antidote is going to work, in which case I'm going to have a very bad night, but nothing worse than I've been through at least ten times before, and in the morning I'll be covered in sweat and starving, or... I didn't get the antidote soon enough, and no hospital is going to help me anyway."

Barton was glad Coulson couldn't see his face react to that idea. "I'm going to look around and see if I can find anything to cover you with. I'll be right back."

"Okay." And he heard Barton shuffle off, leaving him alone with his thoughts. A shiver ran through his body; he let it run its course. The saline on his shoulder felt cold, and he was glad about that, because he could focus on it, to keep from drifting off again.

Outside, in the distance, he heard a lone siren. There had been sirens and honking before, fire department, police, paramedics, and they'd stopped roughly where the solitary vehicle was stopping now. So he had a pretty good idea how far they were from the site of the rooming house explosion and collapse. The new arrival was probably a supervisor.

By now SHIELD would have found out what had happened, and would be looking for them, but cautiously, because of all the excitement in the streets of Lyon tonight, and because protocol called for them to assume, correctly in this case, that there were still active hostiles in the area. In the morning it would be different, because the streets would be full of civilians. The enemy wouldn't be able to go around heavily-armed, and SHIELD could saturate the area with agents in plainclothes armed with only a sidearm and 911 on speed dial. At sunrise, if the people hunting Barton and Coulson were as good as their attack earlier tonight indicated, they would just pack up and sneak away. In the morning, everything would be fine.

He just had to make it to morning.

Funny: He'd just thought of the situation as him lasting until morning. He knew Barton would be fine, fifty guys with rockets and tanks could lay siege to this location and Barton would be disappointed that they hadn't come up with a better challenge. The only reason he'd run and hid in the first place was Coulson couldn't take care of himself.

He was Barton's liability. He knew Barton didn't see it that way, and he knew if their positions were reversed he, as the uninjured one, wouldn't see it that way.

You take care of your own when they're injured in the field. There's not even a question about it. You're there for your comrades, as they're there for you.

So he was being stupid, to think of himself as a liability. Worse, unprofessional. That wasn't like him. Was it the injury, the fever? Or would he feel differently if he were being protected by an agent who wasn't Clint Barton?

The answer was probably All Of The Above, but especially the last one. Everything had changed, just like that.

His eyes hurt less than they before. Either he was getting better, or the nerve endings were dying.

Barton was back, he could feel it, although the Hawk hadn't made a sound. "There's nothing here; it's been cleaned out. The closest I came to a blanket was the fur on a mouse caught in a trap, but even if the mouse was big enough for a rug the smell wouldn't be worth it."

"It's okay."

"Why do you even need a mousetrap in a place you've completely emptied anyway? He wasn't going to cause any harm; there's nothing here."

"Barton - "

"So what the fuck do you have to kill him for?"

Coulson was having trouble calling on his director-in-the-field voice. He took a deep breath and tried it again.

"Barton."

That did the trick. "What? Sorry."

"There was nothing here for you to find. It's okay. I'll be fine."

Barton wanted to shout at him, 'But you might not be fine!' And if Coulson didn't make it... He couldn't lose him. Not this soon after finally deciding he wasn't going to hide any more.

Should he tell him, now, in case he didn't make it?

No. Of course not. If Phil didn't feel that way, the last thing either of them needed right now was for the atmosphere to get awkward.

He played his penlight over Coulson's body, searching for any other injuries or concerns they might have missed. There wasn't anything. He pointed the light at Coulson's chest. It wasn't as muscular as Clint's, but it was well built. The delineations were clear, and you could tell how hard the muscles were. His chest had more hair on it than Clint's, too, and even that Barton found attractive. It was perfect for Coulson, because it hid parts of him: Coulson kept a lot to himself. But like the hair on his chest, concealing the power of the muscles below, Coulson's impenetrable professionalism and occasional awkward enthusiasm were the surface that covered the strongest man, and the best heart, Clint Barton had ever known.

His eyes had gotten cloudy. He blinked a few times, and resisted the urge to sniff away the sting developing in his nose because he didn't want Coulson to hear it. Time to get back to the needs of the mission. "I'm going to drape your jacket over your chest, to try and keep you warm."

"It'll probably do a better job of that than the flashlight beam is doing."

"Um, yeah. Is your back warm enough?"

"I've warmed up the floor by this point, so it's fine."

"Okay." He put the jacket across Coulson's torso, making sure every bit of skin was covered. The jacket felt very thin to Barton, like it wasn't going to do a very good job of keeping his friend warm. "It's not a very heavy jacket, is it?"

"It wasn't designed as a thermal blanket; it was meant to keep me mobile."

'And to look damn good doing it,' Barton wanted to say. He could have said it, he would have said it to any other agent, male or female, just as a friendly joke. But he hesitated to say it to Coulson, and he knew exactly why: It meant too much to him.

"But you know what the biggest problem with this jacket is?" Coulson asked.

"No, what?"

"Some idiot put a hole through it."

Barton laughed, so loudly it echoed off the empty walls. He clamped his hand down over his mouth to stop himself, since after all they were still hiding from a hit squad, but he was thrilled to see Coulson smiling. His eyes were bandaged, he was sweating heavily, there were angry red patches where the venom had sprayed his cheeks, but in spite of that his smile was the most beautiful thing Barton had ever seen. He was grateful that his friend was still able to do it. And he wanted nothing more in the world than to put his hands on that face, rub his thumbs over the cheeks, and plant a tender kiss right on Phil Coulson's lips.

It was a desire he felt pretty often; he'd gotten good at resisting it.

Coulson got hit by a trembling fit. His body arched, he hissed during the worst of it, and just as Barton was afraid it was going to be something more serious, it subsided.

He gave Coulson a few seconds to get his breath and his composure back, then asked, "You're not going to be warm enough, are you?"

"No, probably not."

"Okay, then, I think I should... " what word was he going to use? Cuddle? Snuggle? He didn't want to snuggle with Coulson - well, okay, he did, he really really did - but that wasn't what this was about. This was about warmth, protection. Coulson was feverish, and he needed Barton's body heat next to him. Barton had to press his body into Coulson's, getting as close to him as he could, as completely as he could, wrapping his arms around him and holding him and... Oh, god, what word was he going to use?

Coulson knew what Barton had been about to say. Obviously, the most logical thing to do was to share body warmth. But why had Barton stopped before completing his suggestion?

Did he... not want to share body heat? Coulson trembled some more, not from the fever. For him, the moment of intimacy they'd shared earlier tonight had been liberating, an open door into the joy at the heart of his strongest desires.

But what if Barton didn't share those desires? At the time, Barton had given himself fully to the moment, but now that there'd been some distance, now that he'd had some time to think about it, was he embarrassed, or worse, ashamed? Was he regretting it, was it like a drunken tryst when you wake up and realise you've made a terrible mistake? Was he worried that if he lay down with Coulson now, that he'd be leading him on? Coulson didn't think it was so bad that Barton would be repulsed by the idea, they were friends after all, comrades.

But when Barton had been carrying him, and had felt Coulson erection pressing into his back, he'd complained.

'No! He didn't complain. What he said was... ' Coulson was having trouble remembering. 'Dammit.' It was the fever. It was making him forgetful, and it was messing with his emotions, infecting his imagination and blowing things out of proportion. The only way to fight that was to do what he always did: fall back on his training.

"In the event a patient's body heat needs to be maintained, but insulating materials are insufficient," Coulson said aloud, quoting from the manual as exactly as he could remember, "the sharing of body heat is recommended. The patient should be made to lie comfortably, and the caregiver should lie alongside, pressing the cores of their bodies together, arms wrapped around the patient, to keep their bodies close together."

Phil was quoting from the manual, clinically, impersonally. Barton got the message loud and clear: This was just medical necessity; he shouldn't get any ideas. Okay. Well, not okay, but it was what it was. He lay down beside Coulson, on his right, non-bitten side, took a second to adjust to the temperature of the floor, and asked him, "Do you want to roll over onto your side, and I'll get in behind you?"

'Get in behind you.' Clint would have liked a second chance at that phrasing.

Under ideal circumstances, Coulson would have liked nothing better than to have Barton spooning him, but as the saying so often goes, these were not ideal circumstances. "I don't think that's a good idea, because there wouldn't be a good place to put your arm. Above my arm, you'd be hitting my injury. Below the arm, I'd have to raise it a little, and that would hurt my shoulder. So I think the best thing is for you to roll over on your side, on top of the right side of my chest, then throw your arm over me, just under the chest." Barton did that. "And then your leg," but he stopped talking, because Barton was already doing that, bending his knee to cover Coulson's legs as best as one leg could, which had the added benefit of shifting Barton's weight so all of it was on Coulson.

Barton turned off the penlight. Everything was dark, and quiet.

Coulson gave in to the moment and allowed himself to focus on how nice it felt to have Barton on top of him like that, his inner thigh pressing down on Coulson's quads, his chest pressing into Coulson's chest, his arm wrapped protectively around him, keeping him safe.

Once again Barton was close to Phil's neck, smelling his shaving cream. This time the smell of Coulson's sweat was more pronounced, and he loved that smell too, because it reminded him of the rush after a good sparring or workout session, and the satisfaction and exultation of coming out of a mission that had pushed both of them, where they'd both had to work at it, and they'd enjoyed the thrill of victory together. He knew the smell of Phil's sweat very well, he could call it to mind when he wanted to, and he'd done exactly that, in fact, on more than one night when he was too horny to sleep. Phil's sweat reminded him of how strong and capable he was, just like his shaving cream reminded Clint of his solidity, how you could always count on him.

Both men were more erect than they wanted to be, and neither wanted the other to notice. Worrying about their own cocks kept each man from noticing the other's.

Somehow, they both managed to fall asleep. Maybe it was that their adrenalines had run their course and left nothing behind, maybe it was tiredness brought on by everything they'd been through recently, or maybe it was just that, for the first time tonight, they were both comfortable, at peace with themselves and with each other, perfectly relaxed, and knowing that nothing could go wrong while they were together.

Hours passed. Clint woke because his arm, the one draped over Phil, was getting sore at the shoulder. He tried to move it very gently, but Phil's body noticed and it disrupted his sleep pattern. He moaned, and shifted his weight a little. Barton held his breath, hoping he hadn't woken Phil, or if he had that Phil would immediately fall back asleep.

He waited. Phil's breathing was regular, but it didn't seem very deep. Barton couldn't tell whether he was asleep or awake.

Wait - did Phil just say something? It sounded like he'd said Barton's name.

Clint didn't say anything. He might be wrong, and talking might wake Coulson up.

"Barton?"

There was no doubt, that time. "I'm right here."

"I know." He wasn't quite whispering. It was more that his words didn't have a lot of air pushing them out. "I can feel your arm over my chest."

Coulson took a deeper breath, and it raised Barton's arm up a little. "Do you want me to move it?"

"No. Don't do that. It feels nice."

"Are you warm enough?" His voice sounded a lot louder to him than Coulson's did. He hoped he wasn't talking too loudly for him.

"I'm warm enough. But that's not what I meant when I said... when I said your arm feels nice."

Barton didn't know what to say to that. He was pretty sure staying mum was his best option.

This was confirmed when Coulson kept talking. "I like the weight of it... It feels reassuring."

"Good. We need to keep you warm."

"Be quiet. I'm trying to tell you something."

Barton went back to his original plan of keeping his mouth shut. He had a feeling he knew what Coulson was trying to say, but he couldn't trust that feeling, because he wanted too much to be right about it, he didn't want to fool himself into getting too hopeful, in case he was wrong.

"Your body feels warm," Coulson said, still very softly. "You should have crawled under the jacket with me, but that's no big deal. I can understand if you didn't want to... snuggle... against my bare, sweaty chest."

That wasn't it - he'd just forgotten! "No, that's not it, believe me, that is absolutely - "

"Shhh."

"Sorry."

"I like how your body feels. I like having you this close to me. I've thought about it... a lot. Thought about you holding me, me holding you."

Even though he was shocked, Barton didn't interrupt at this point, didn't even think about it, because he wanted to make sure he heard every single syllable coming out of Coulson's mouth.

"At first it was just sex. I thought about your body, how good it looks, how great it would feel to touch you. But, after a while... "

Barton waited. And waited. He heard Coulson take a deep breath through his nose.

"Phil?"

"Mmm?"

"You stopped talking. Mid-sentence."

"Sorry."

"Are you okay?"

"Never better. That's the truth."

"So, uh, you were saying?"

"About sex... "

"Yeah."

"Gimme a sec... Right! Sex. With you. I think about. A lot."

Phil didn't sound like Phil. Was he delirious?

"But what I was going to say is, after thinking about sex with you for a few months, I started thinking about more than sex with you."

Now Barton wasn't sure if he wasn't the one who was delirious.

"I mean things like holding hands as we walk along the beach, cooking supper together, one of us waiting around for the other so we can walk home together from work, to our home. Those kinds of things. Do you know what I mean?"

Yes. Barton had thought of those things, too. A lot. And he knew what they meant. They meant Love. They meant Living Together.

They meant Forever.

Coulson kept talking, completely unaware he'd just shattered Clint Barton's universe for the second time that evening. "I didn't think... I mean I wasn't sure... I never... "

"Coulson... ? Phil?"

"I'm... tired. I think I'll... you know... "

Barton shifted his head, so he'd be able to tell if Phil was still breathing. He felt the air on his ear, Phil's breath, and it was regular: He'd fallen back asleep.

Barton was jealous. There was no damn way he was going to fall back asleep, not after what Coulson had just said.

But.. what had he said? That he'd been thinking of Forever stuff with Barton. Okay. But he hadn't said whether or not he thought it was going to happen. He hadn't really, if you looked at it closely, said he wanted it to happen. He'd just said he'd been thinking about it. And then he'd fallen back into sleep. His drugged, fevered sleep.

Clint Barton had a heart-sickening thought. What if Coulson hadn't been conscious just then? What if he'd been talking in his sleep, imagining... whatever? He'd actually nodded off at one point, and people say all kinds of things out loud when they're asleep. You don't even have to be suffering from a fever: He'd once heard Egerton call an entire bridge game in his sleep, and all Egerton had been suffering from was a 52-hour shift during an All Hands.

"Coulson?" He didn't want to wake him, so he'd spoken really softly. So softly he wasn't even sure his throat had made any noise.

You know, now that he thought about it, it was pretty dumb to say a guy's name out loud in the first place when you wanted him to keep sleeping.

And even if Coulson did wake up, what was Barton going to ask him? Whether he'd meant it just now when he'd been talking about Forever stuff? And if Coulson said Yes, would it just be another fevered hallucination? And if he said No, what then? Would they both stay awake the rest of the night, not talking, feeling awkward?

He decided to let Coulson sleep. Coulson needed to sleep, he needed to get better, so that maybe... or maybe not. Either way, Barton would find out in the morning.

But it was going to be a long rest of the night for him.

There was no harm in holding Coulson tighter with his arm. If it woke Coulson up, Barton could just say he was trying to keep Coulson warm. Which would be partially true.

So he squeezed Coulson tighter, as though this would be the last chance he'd ever get. He hoped it wouldn't be. He didn't want to have to let go, ever.

An hour passed. Barton had a pretty good sense of time, from all the missions where he'd had a target in his scope from sunset to sunrise for several days in a row. If it hadn't been an hour, he knew he wasn't off by more than five minutes in either direction. During that time, Coulson hadn't woken again, hadn't even stirred, he'd just continued to breathe regularly. Barton wondered what time sunrise was. Then he wondered what time it had been when they'd woken up together after settling down for the night. How many hours would he have to lie like this?

Another hour passed. No change from Coulson. Barton wondered if he should do what Coulson said, and get under the jacket with him. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference at this point.

Yet another hour passed. Was it getting lighter in here? Maybe the sun was starting to come out. Barton was hungry.

Sixty more very long minutes. All Barton could think about any more was he loved Phil Coulson, he wanted to be with Phil Coulson, he hoped Phil wanted to be with him, he hoped Phil was going to be okay, he hoped Phil hadn't been delirious when he'd said what he'd said before, god it had been so hot when Phil had talked dirty to him over the radio, he really wanted to fuck Phil Coulson, and go to sleep with him in a bed after, the two of them holding each other as they drifted off, he loved Phil Coulson, he wanted to be with Phil Coulson, he hoped Phil wanted to be with him, over and over and over...

It was maybe thirty minutes after that when he heard the noise outside. It was the kind of noise people make when they're trying not to make any noise. Two people. No - three.

They stopped walking, right at the back door to the building, the one Barton had broken open so he and Phil could rest in here.

"Do you hear them?"

Jesus! Barton hadn't even realised Coulson was awake. But it made sense: Light sleepers lived longer in their line of work.

It was good that Phil was awake, because Barton didn't need to worry that moving would wake him up. The sun was bright enough outside now that the light coming in through the cracks in the boarded-up windows was more than he needed to see what he was doing. He carefully slid off Coulson, picked up his gear, and aimed an arrow at the door.

There was a knock. "Anybody in there?"

"Nowicki?"

"You got Coulson in there with you, Barton?"

"Yeah. Come in - slowly."

The door eased open. Nowicki came in, hands first, held up with the fingers splayed, to demonstrate she wasn't carrying any weapons.

She knew Barton wouldn't be taking anything for granted about how the mission had been compromised.

The door opened wider. Behind her were two other SHIELD agents Barton knew. He eased up on the bow and aimed it away.

Then Nowicki saw Coulson on the floor. "Holy shit!"

"Don't worry, Nowi- " and then Coulson's throat caught, and he started coughing. It doubled him up, and it looked painful, but he held up his hand so that no one would come running to help him. When it was over he stayed sitting up, and took a steadying breath. "What I was going to say," and his voice sounded much stronger this time, "is that it looks much worse than it is."

"What it looks like is you went twelve rounds with a giant snake."

"How are you doing?"

"Bruises, contusions, the usual. I'd be embarrassed to come back from a mission with anything less."

Barton pointed to the bandage wrapped around Nowicki's hand. "What happened there?"

"Sprained my wrist. But that's Kerr's fault. The building was coming down around us, so I had to jump the last three feet, and when we landed outside I wasn't carrying him properly."

"You got Kerr out?" Coulson sounded very fragile.

"Of course I got him out, Boss," Nowicki said, coming over, crouching, and putting a hand on his shoulder. "We never abandon anyone. You taught us that."

Coulson's facial muscles twitched. He was trying not to cry. It wasn't like him to break down, or even to come that close, but he'd been through the wringer overnight. He got himself under control; Barton was pretty sure Nowicki hadn't even noticed.

But Barton'd noticed. He'd spent a lot of time in the last year studying Coulson's face, when Coulson's attention was somewhere else.

Coulson said, "How's Kerr doing?"

"Broken pelvis, broken collarbone, broken ribs, concussion. He's already complaining about the Jell-o, so I think he's going to be fine."

Coulson nodded at that, relieved. Then his face changed for a second, and again Barton caught it. Coulson's thoughts had gone somewhere less positive.

"Nowicki," he said, but his head turned toward where Barton was, "can you give me and Barton a few moments alone, please? We have something important we need to finish up with."

"Sure." She motioned for the other two agents to precede her out the door. "The ambulance will be here in five minutes."

"Plenty of time. Thanks."

'This is it,' Barton thought. 'He's going to tell me that he remembers what he said last night, but he was out of it. He's going to say he's sorry, he didn't mean to give me the wrong idea, he made the dirty talk convincing because the mission depended on it, and when he said he wanted to be with me his mind wasn't really there. He's going to let me down easy.

'He's going to break my heart into a million pieces.'

"Clint? Are you there?"

"Always."

"I want you to... " Coulson took a steadying breath. "I don't know if I can see. If the antidote worked, then I should be able to. If it didn't, then I probably won't... ever again. If that's the case, then I want to find out now, just you and me. So, can you please take the bandage off for me?"

"Sure." It wasn't what he'd been expecting. He didn't know whether he was relieved or more frightened. Either way, there was something his friend needed for him to do, so as Phil sat up Clint crouched down, putting one hand on the floor to steady himself. Then he said, "Turn away," so the back of Coulson's head would be facing him, and with his other hand he undid the bandage, letting it fall into Coulson's lap.

Coulson turned to him, his eyes still shut, and Barton lifted his hand off the floor, about to raise himself from his crouch, but Coulson heard the shifting and put his arm out to touch Barton.

"Please don't stand up. I want you nearby. In either case."

"Okay." Barton sat down on the floor. If Coulson needed him, he wasn't going anywhere.

"I feel like I should count it down," said Coulson, and he tried to laugh, but couldn't quite manage it. So instead he opened his eyes.

They were red. Not bloodshot, as in white with red specks, but red, bright, angry red all over, an undisturbed red like the colour had been painted into the eyes with a marker. He looked awful. Barton was frightened.

Coulson shut his eyes, pressed the lids together tightly, and opened them again, then blinked most of the water out.

"I can see you."

It took Barton a second to realise he'd spoken. "What? You can?"

"Yes. I can see you. I can see everything. The light hurts, but I can see."

"That's great." He laughed. Phil laughed. Clint moved forward to give his friend a great big hug.

But then he stopped.

Coulson looked confused.

Shit. Barton would have to tell him. It didn't matter about the moment, he'd already ruined that just now, so he might as well just come right out and ask Coulson how he really felt, because all this uncertainty was killing him.

"Phil... What do you remember, about last night?"

"It was a pretty eventful evening. Could you be more specific?"

"After I put your jacket over you, and... curled up with you, we fell asleep. And then, some time later, we both woke up."

"Yes."

"And I asked you whether my arm was hurting you, and... "

"And I said that I had dreams about living with you, being a couple, holding hands on the beach?"

Phil didn't usually cut him off like that. He was ripping the bandage off quickly, hoping it wouldn't hurt. But it would, Barton knew it would, more than any other hurt he'd ever received in his life.

But the preamble was over. There was nothing left for him to do but ask, directly.

"Phil... when you said all that, did you mean it? Or were you... maybe... delirious?"

"Clint. Look at me."

He did, but it was hard. Even though Barton knew they were going to be okay, Phil's eyes looked really bad. And even though Barton knew it was for the best, he didn't want to hear what Phil was about to say. Still, he looked him in the eyes and waited.

Coulson stared at him straight back. "I've been irrational more than a few times in the last several months, but if there has been one time in recent memory that I was absolutely not delirious, that I was unquestionably fully and completely rational, it was that moment."

"What?" That hadn't sounded right.

Coulson tried again. "Last night I finally stopped hiding, I stopped pretending, I threw my stupid pride and my insecurities away and I told you what I want. What I want, Clint Barton, is you."

Barton had no idea what to say to that. He wanted to say something, he knew he should, but he couldn't. It was too much. He wanted to throw both fists in the air and shout for joy. He wanted to cry. He wanted to squeeze Phil so much they'd both explode. He was pretty sure he was going to be stuck like this, paralysed for the rest of his life.

But Coulson looked exactly the way people always look when they're left hanging. "You believe me, right?"

Of course Clint believed him. That's why he couldn't move! Clint was looking deeply into Phil's tortured eyes, straight into his soul. That's why Phil had wanted Clint to look directly at him: so he'd know Phil wasn't lying, that Phil had never been more sure of anything in his entire life. Clint was still looking into Phil's eyes, and he saw all of that, plus something else.

He saw the future in there. Their future, together.

Barton's eyes were getting all cloudy again. This was stupid, he had to say something, Phil was looking like he was about to crumble to dust. There was only one thing Clint could think to say, it was filling up all the space in his mind like a balloon, so he said it.

"I love you, Phil."

Coulson's face didn't crumble to dust, but it came damn close. "I love you, too."

And suddenly they were hugging each other, and crying, tears of relief, tears of joy, in Coulson's case tears of pain from his eyes and the fact the clench was hurting his shoulder, but he really didn't care about that, none of it was important, the only thing that mattered was that after too many nights staring up at the ceiling in hope and loneliness he'd finally confessed his feelings to Clint Barton, and Clint had said he loved him. He squeezed Clint even tighter; he wasn't going to ever let go.

"Do you remember," Coulson said, as tears dripped off his chin, "that right before you shot the antidote into my eyes, I stopped you, and looked straight at you for a few moments?"

"Yeah, I remember." Barton's shirt was getting soaked from Coulson's tears. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world, even better than this hug. "I could tell it was hurting your eyes, and I wondered why you did it."

"I did it... so if the antidote didn't work, if the next time I opened my eyes they were ruined, if I never got to see anything again as long as I lived... the last thing I would ever remember seeing would be your beautiful face."

Clint sobbed, and hugged him tighter.

"Ow."

"Sorry." But he didn't loosen his grip. "Give me a second."

"I understand. Take your time."

Then they heard the sound of the ambulance siren, getting nearer.

"I think that's your ride." Clint let Coulson go, and as soon as he did he felt a heavy sense of loss.

"It's okay," said Coulson, whose face indicated he felt exactly the same way. "Neither of us is going anywhere."

"You got that right." Clint stood up, held out his hand to Coulson. "You think you can stand?"

"With you," Coulson said, slapping his hand into Clint's and flexing his arm, drawing himself up, "I can do absolutely anything."

"Can you walk?"

"I could make it to the ambulance on my own, barely."

"Then let's do it."

Barton took a step forward, but Coulson grabbed him by the shoulder. "I think you missed a key word in there. I said I 'could' - but I don't want to. I'd much rather walk there leaning against you, if you're okay with it."

"That sounds awesome."

So Coulson put his good arm around Clint's shoulders, Clint put his arm around Coulson's waist, and they started walking toward the back door together.

"This feels nice," said Clint.

"It does."

"So... are we a couple?"

"I think so. I hope so."

"Because there's other stuff we discussed last night, too."

"Like what?"

"You know... during the mission."

"Oh. That."

"Yeah. I should probably tell you, when I was listening to you saying all those things, you were the person I was picturing in my mind."

"Good. I'm glad."

"I can, uh, see that."

"Well... I promise you, as soon as the doctors say I can, and probably even before, we'll get to work turning everything we discussed into a reality."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the very patient jmathieson for her diligent beta work!


End file.
